The essay argues that inherited wealth, following a power law, will dominate the future as AI dismantles the traditional link between IQ and earnings. It explains how traits like intelligence and height distribute normally (Gaussian), while wealth does not. The core claim is that AI is destroying the historical bridge connecting cognitive ability to high income and inherited wealth. Large language models already match median professional performance on routine tasks across law, finance, and engineering, collapsing the IQ premium in labor markets.

The capital premium, however, remains strong. This structural shift means inherited wealth will compound across generations, creating an aristocracy of compounding. The essay maps a critical transition window – the next 5-10 years – where deep domain knowledge combined with AI fluency is scarce and gateable by skill, not inheritance.

After this window closes, legal inheritance systems run alone. UBI and capital taxation can mitigate extremes but cannot create new top-tier entrants in a world where labor no longer generates sufficient surplus capital from scratch. The numbers published quarterly – labor share of GDP versus capital returns, and the correlation between professional income and inherited wealth – already point towards this trajectory.

This framework aims to change how readers see their children's futures.